A Peek Back in Time

BOOK REVIEW

COURTESY OF GRODZKA GATE THEATRE CENTRE, LUBLIN, POLAND/WHITE GOAT PRESS.

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

In 2010, Krysztof Janus, an architectural engineer working on renovating some buildings in Lublin, Poland, found an unexpected treasure in the abandoned attic at 4 Rynek. There he discovered, buried under trash and dirt — actual soil — glass plates, photographic negatives on thin glass sheets, each a bit smaller than four by six inches.

Digging further, the engineer found about 2,700 of these glass plates, a package weighing some 440 pounds.

The local cultural center, Grodzka Gate — NN Theatre, arranged to have the mysterious glass plates cleaned and restored. Some of the plates went on display at Grodzka Gate, located in the 14th-century building that marked the border between the Jewish and non-Jewish areas of Lublin. On a trip in 2018 exploring other aspects of Jewish history, Aaron Lansky and Lisa Kassow happened to see the glass plates on display there. Lansky, whose field is Yiddish literature, and Kassow, a former professional photographer, felt astonished by the treasure they had seen.

When the cultural center first got the photographic negatives, Lansky observes, “No one had a clue where they came from, or who took them or how they got there.”

In 2015, one of the Grodzka Gate associates, Jakub Chmielewski, discovered a German document from 1940 identifying a resident of 4 Rynek as “Abram Zylberberg, photographer.” Later research uncovered a few details about Zylberberg. He wore sidelocks, but not so long as those of the Hasidim. He went everywhere with his tripod and camera. He also worked as a carpenter.

Lansky, director of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, assigned a staff member, Lisa Newman, to work with Piotr Nazaruk, the curator of Grodzka Gate, to research the photographs in the hopes of developing a documentary or a book.

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Nazaruk, Newman and Lansky worked on this project for four years, and now White Goat Press of the Yiddish Book Center combines with Grodzka Gate to jointly publish The Glass Plates of Lublin: Found Photographs of a Lost Jewish World, displaying about 160 of the 2,700 photographs taken by Abram Zylberberg between 1913 and 1930.

Many of the photographs show Jewish life in the bustling city, including sports clubs, political meetings, yeshiva teachers with their students and people at work or on holiday. Others show non-Jewish farm workers at work or relaxing. Street scenes show Polish urbanites, who could be Jews or nonJews. Poland was becoming modern, and the scenes include bicycles, automobiles, industrial engines, sewing machines, railroads and radios.

Lansky says, “You can see the complexity of this world, and also the integration of Jews into this society. I don’t want to overstate that. They spoke a Jewish language, Yiddish. They spoke Polish too, but mostly Yiddish at home. Many of them were going to a Jewish school. They weren’t immediately identifiable, as earlier generations had been. They went into modern professions as well. These photographs show young women sunbathing, wearing bathing suits, and sports clubs, as well as rabbinical students.”

The photographs, as restored, look technically beautiful, models of composition, and perfectly in focus, the work of a professional photographer. In another way, these are ordinary photographs. They show people, Lansky says, “full of life and promise. These people are like us, living their lives, full of life and full of hope.”

That captured vitality makes these photographs fascinating. Another part of their fascination comes, not from the photographs, but because we know what was in store for these vibrant lively subjects; people who, of course, had no clue of what was going to come.

It remains difficult to find out who appears in most of the photographs. After all these years, hardly anyone remains who can identify the subjects; the Jews of Lublin before the war numbered about 40,000; only about 200 lived there after the war. Many of the photographs appear with only general descriptions, with no caption or with painfully incomplete captions.

A poignant example: One photograph shows six young women relaxing on a forest floor. Two hold musical instruments. The caption partly identifies only one of the women as either Maria, Leja or Chaya Milsztajn.

Lansky explains that a woman called

In 1989, Aaron Lansky took a two-year sabbatical from graduate school (at McGill in Montreal) to try to try to save the world’s Yiddish books. He went to New York to meet with scholars to set up a plan of action, to rescue what they estimated were about 7,000 Yiddish books. Lansky says, “They were so far off that it is preposterous.” To date, the Center has recovered more than 1.5 million books. Lansky returned to Amherst,

Massachusetts (where he had done his undergraduate work at Hampshire

College) and began the Yiddish Book

Center. In the spring of 1990, he sent out word that the Yiddish Book Center was ready to receive Yiddish books.

Now, 43 years later, Lansky still heads the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst. It has collected more than a million volumes, donating duplicate volumes to students and libraries around the world. In 1997, the Yiddish Book Center started the Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library, making works available for free dowload. Digitizing continues, with more than 12,000 volumes now available, which have generated more than 1.6 million downloads. The Book Center also started White Goat Press to publish works translated from the 39,000 different Yiddish books collected at the center. The Glass Plates of Lublin is not translated from the Yiddish, but it too represents a sliver of Jewish history salvaged from the destruction of Yiddish culture.

to tell him, ““Oh, my God, I recognize this photo in the book. My whole life, that was on my mother’s bedside table. That was one of several women sitting together, and one of the women was my mother’s sister. One of the women in the photo is my aunt.”

Her aunt that she had never met, of course; her mother had three sisters. She didn’t know which of the three is in the photograph. No one has identified the other five women.

The book ends with the poignant request: “If you recognize any of the people or places in these photos, please let us know at: White Goat Press, Yiddish Book Center, 1021 West Street, Amherst, MA 01002, USA, or whitegoatpress@yiddishbookcenter.org.

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The Glass Plates of Lublin includes photographs of dignitaries laying the cornerstone for the Yeshiva Chochmei Lublin on May 22, 1924, and of the Yeshiva’s opening on June 24, 1930. At the time, it was among the largest institutions for traditional study of Jewish sources in the world. The building of the Yeshiva Chochmei Lublin now houses 190 Jewish refugees from Ukraine. Rabbi Meir Shapiro, founder of the Yeshiva, appears with other rabbinic leaders in several of the photographs. Rabbi Shapiro also originated the popular Daf Yomi project, setting up a schedule for Jews to study the same two-sided page of Talmud each day, and so to complete learning the entire Talmud in more than seven years. Around the world, Talmud students celebrated the 13th Siyyum (rejoicing at completing the Talmud) in January 2020; one celebration took place in Lublin in the building that had held Yeshiva Chochmei Lublin.

The Yeshiva met in its building in Lublin until the German army came to Poland in 1939. The scholars who remained in Poland were doomed. Rabbi Moshe Rothenberg, who had escaped Poland, became the founding dean of a successor Yeshiva Chochmei Lublin, founded in Detroit in 1942. He welcomed many refugee scholars who had escaped from Europe. Among the refugees who settled in Detroit from Chochmei Lublin Yeshiva in Poland Yeshiva were Rabbi Shapiro’s assistant Baruch Elbaum and Rabbi Itzhak Kuperman.